by Gabi Moore
They said nothing.
“When that fucking Mickey shows his damn face again, he’s gonna wish he never took off in the first place,” I said, cracking my own knuckles in my hand, one at a time. Janie looked up at me.
“Mickey? Fat Mickey?” she said.
“Yeah, Fat Mickey,” I said.
Melissa also pricked her ears. “Mickey’s dead” she said and shrugged.
“The fuck he is. And what do you know? Keep your nose out. Mickey’s got issues. Disappears for weeks on end. His wife or something…”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure they took him out,” she said again, and carried on working. Melissa looked sideways over at her.
The guys had sworn up and down that he was fine, that he just did this, that my father and him had an understanding, that I needed to not make a big deal about it …and now this 20-year-old nobody bitch was busy telling me otherwise? I tried to speak calmly, to not let them see how ruffled I was.
“Who took him out?”
“Oh, I don’t know, somebody,” she said. “Who’s that guy who left? That guy who did a runner and then you sent people after him to take him out?”
It irked me beyond belief that this mere child knew anything at all about the operations of this business.
“The guy that left? Mr. Martin?”
“Nah.”
“Giovane K?”
“Nah, the other guy, that really hot guy,” she said and giggled.
I felt ready to explode out of some hot circle growing somewhere on the top of my head. It was all just a big joke, was it? That I had so many defectors that people could barely keep track? The hot guy. The fucking hot guy. Melissa seemed as surprised as I was.
“Do you mean Jack? The hit guy?” Melissa said.
“Yes! Jack. That’s what I heard anyway,” she said. With her tongue she fished out a forgotten wad of gum and began loudly cracking it between her teeth. Melissa cowered a little as she looked over at me.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I yelled at her. She looked mad. “Anyway, you heard it? Where did you ‘hear’ it?” I said, turning my wrath to Janie.
“I don’t know! Just around, you know. Everybody knows it, not like it’s a big secret…” she said.
I was so mad I wanted to punch a hole clean through that table. Not only were the few men I had left fucking up on our new territories, and not only did I have spies and backstabbers to deal with, my own upper level managers were lying to me through their teeth.
“You OK, Joey…?”
I looked up to see Melissa’s soft face, watching me quizzically. I snorted, straightened in my chair and shrugged.
“I’m perfect baby, don’t worry about a thing.” I couldn’t let them get even an inkling that they had known about so trivial a piece of information that I didn’t.
What happened in the next five minutes was hard to pin down. Though I sat perfectly still on that chair, hands laced and head lowered, my mind was whizzing a thousand miles an hour. I would have all their heads. I didn’t care if I wiped out three quarters of what my father had built, I would root out the insubordination, once and for all. But it wasn’t enough. They were just two women, for fuck’s sake. Worthless, stupid women who’d do anything for money. And yet …they thought they were better than me. I could see it in their eyes. In the way they moved around. I could smell it on them, I knew I could.
I couldn’t let them know how deeply humiliated it felt to watch them sit there like that. How white-hot the rage for them was as that moment. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t get my own. I just needed to think. I had already consoled myself that Evie was still on the loose, but I had been assured over and over again that Jack had been exterminated. I watched them. Weighing, scraping, packing, knotting… it was all a mockery of me. All designed to make fun of me. They were pushing me. Trying their luck. But I wouldn’t let them get the better of me.
“Hey Janie, what else do you think we should do, to fix up things around here, huh?”
“Boss?” she said and gave me a shocked look.
“Well, you got so many bright ideas, go on and tell me. Maybe I make you my next VP, huh?” I said and flashed her a juicy grin. She smiled but Melissa’s face went white.
“Well,” she said, and made like she was thinking. “This is just my opinion, right? But I think what made your dad so great was that he never, ever stuck his head out, you know?”
She was behaving like she was at a slumber party chatting over pizza to a friend, rather than at the secret home of the country’s most feared drug kingpin with a pile of coke in front of her.
“Yeah I know.”
“Well, if you ask me, this is the problem,” she said and indicated the white powder on her fingertips. Melissa looked like she desperately wanted her to shut up. I smiled as broadly as I could manage and egged her on.
“You mean the coke?”
“Yeah, I mean the coke. Obviously, it’s a big fuck you to the people on the west side, right? It’s like, you’re deliberately asking for trouble, you know? Your dad was always in the shadows. Nobody even knew who he was. But then you come along, and you’re like” here she laughed “you’re like this big dude who’s totally like a gangster from a movie, you know? And everyone knows who you are and where to find you, and this coke is just like a big old target on your head,” she said, smiling at her own brilliant analysis.
It was then that I saw it. I saw into her. It was only a split second. Only the tiniest fraction of time. But it was enough. For a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of what she really felt about me. And it was awful. She wasn’t afraid of me. Oh no, she was derisive. Her contempt for me was only mildly suspended for as long as it took to extract enough cash from me. For that split second, I saw myself as she saw me. A violent, diminished man. Unattractive. Pathetic.
It was enough to take my breath away. She prattled on, oblivious to the deep channel straight into her brain that I had briefly opened and peered into. Completely unaware of the effect her words were having on me. Melissa made a move to cut her off, but the girl kept speaking.
“Anyway, that’s why I think you should just lay low sometimes, you know? Just take the ego out of the game a little and be more, what do you call it? Strategic,” she said and smiled simply at me.
In the next breath, I had drawn my pistol, extended my arm directly over the table and sent a bullet straight through the center of her skull.
Melissa screamed. Janie’s mouth flopped open like a dead fish and she sputtered and gargled a little, looking down at the table and then back up at me, before sliding sideways off her chair and into a crooked pile on the floor. Her legs remained tangled up with the chair. Little motes of cocaine sprinkled down onto her like snowflakes. She died with her eyes open. The buzzing in my own head stopped. I put the pistol away.
Melissa’s entire face was red, and she was clutching a hand tightly over her mouth. Crying, she dashed over to the body, hands outstretched.
“Stop,” I said, and lay my hand again over the pistol. “Leave her.”
She shot me a wildly panicked look and scuttled back to her chair. I hated the way her breasts hung down when she leant forward. Like a dog’s. I hated how soft her face looked right now. How completely weak she seemed.
“But Joey, why? Why do it? Why, Joey?”
I hated the tiny snot bubble I could hear in her nose as she cried. I did it because I could. The moment I shot her, she couldn’t look at me that way anymore.
“Get back to work or you’re next,” I said.
I could make out her chest heaving as she stifled some sobs and tried to work with shaking fingers.
“Joey, baby, she was my sister,” she wept.
“Sister? I thought she was just a friend or something…”
She gave me a look as though I’d slapped her.
And then I felt that little channel opening up again. I felt myself getting close to her, to something deep inside those wet eyes of hers. And I didn’t
fucking like it. I didn’t want to look into her mind. And I didn’t want to have to kill her if I found the same thing in there as in that other dirty bitch who now lay bleeding on the floor. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t bear to experience that, not ever again.
“Get up.”
She sniffled and looked at me with damp eyes.
“What?”
“I said get the fuck up!”
She sprang to her feet. I could feel it coming on. I could feel her hate for me. I squeezed my fists down hard to blot it out, to force away that sensation of the pure, black loathing she had for me …but I couldn’t. Melissa was one of the few people I had left. She was an insignificant whore, a nobody, but she alone put up with me, she stayed when the others left and lied to me. She fucked my sorry ass when Evie ran off starry eyed after that stupid “hot” bastard Jack. She was all I had left. She had to love me.
“Take your pants off. Strip, all of it,” I yelled.
She was crying loudly now, unable to look at the body just a few feet to the side of us.
“Joey, please don’t…”
“Shut up. Don’t make me,” I said, my hand going to my pistol again.
If I had to take what I wanted by force, then so be it. She would learn to love me. They would all fucking learn to love me. A haze descended over me as I grabbed the edge of the table and tore upwards, sending it and everything on it flying through the air. She screamed and backed away, but I lurched forward and grabbed her by her hair.
The time for asking was over. The time for telling had begun. And once I was finished here, I would go after both Evie and her lover boy personally. I don’t care what big special secret she claims to know, and I don’t care how hot anybody thinks that motherfucker of hers is, they would both die, even if I had to do it with my own bare hands.
I grabbed the now-naked body of Melissa and swiveled her around so her back faced me. Her hands staggered forward to balance against the wall as I shoved her forward and unzipped. She was crying hard now, her ribcage wracked with sobs as I yanked out my cock and drove my way deep up and into her. She didn’t resist. She didn’t do anything but cry. I didn’t care though. As long as she didn’t turn around, as long as I didn’t have to look inside those eyes of hers and see what I didn’t want to see, it would all be OK.
I would fuck her until it was all OK…
Chapter 17 - Evelyn
I hadn’t been in a log cabin like this since I was a little girl. I had forgotten how lovely it could be, out here in the woods. Just the trees. The cold, crisp air. Even the sunshine seemed cleaner somehow. I liked the wildness of it all. How you had to survive on your own wits. And I always prided myself on being strong. On knowing how to get shit done, and not letting anyone bully me. I don’t know when I myself turned into a bully, but as I sat there and waited for Jack to return, it hit me all at once: I had never really been the victim. But I sure have been the perpetrator.
I had killed. Over and over again. I had been merciless. I had used men’s desire for me as a weapon against them. I had lied and manipulated. And yet still, Jack was out there right now, searching for fresh water for me and the baby.
The fainting spells were getting more frequent now, and I could no longer argue that I was able to tag along after him anymore. It was hard to imagine that there was any danger facing us out here, with the world looking as pretty as it did. But we were being chased.
I hadn’t been involved with the organization in months and yet it had followed me relentlessly anyway. It was only a matter of time before they found us again. Jack was right. We couldn’t keep running. We had to go back, I had to tell everyone what I knew, and we had to put it all behind us, once and for all. The thought of killing Joey felt outrageous, even to me …and yet it was the single point that all my thoughts kept converging on. His father had been shrewd. He had lived entirely on the wrong side of the law. But he wasn’t exactly evil. Joey? There was something wrong there. Something badly wrong, and I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
We had stumbled on this remote cabin two mornings ago. It was nothing but simple, rough-hewn boards pegged together and held up seemingly by moss and vines. It was amazingly well camouflaged, small, comfortable, and ideal for two. It was no bigger inside than a single bedroom, and had only a narrow wooden cot long since abandoned and a little counter where I imagined people once propped up a gas stove.
It was dark inside, and smelt like rotting leaves, but it was warm, and felt safe. Jack had fought to get me to stay here and lay low while he went off in search of food and water for us. It was an odd sensation, being so vulnerable. So dependent on him. But I agreed and the world didn’t end. In fact, it was kind of nice not having to be the one in charge for a change.
I spent the morning examining the cottage in painstaking detail and trying to find something to eat in the near vicinity. If we kept travelling West, we’d land up in town soon enough. Part of me fantasized about just staying out here though. I was getting bigger. My body felt plump and juicy, and I was horny all the time now. I just wanted to fuck him. That was all. Call it pregnancy brain, call it the honeymoon period, or blame it on that strange substance. But there was no denying it. I was different. I felt different.
I sat on the cabin steps cross-legged and did my hair up in a braid. I sang a quiet lullaby to my swollen belly, all alone. I picked a few skinny daisies and hung them inside over the “bed”. These little things felt earth-shattering to me. I no longer felt like Evelyn, the ex-mafia bitch with a bounty on her head. I wanted to just be Eve, the first woman, a fresh start, something that felt a little like forgiveness.
I wouldn’t have to kill Joey. Once I shared what I knew, there would no longer be any need to. I lay inside on the cot for a while, dozing in and out of sleep, listening to the birds. I missed him. When I heard his feet on the dried leaves outside, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I jumped to my feet and threw open the cabin door.
It was Joey.
Just standing there, like someone had cut and paste him from a dingy city street. He was like a black hole in front of me, like all the light around him was bent and trapped by his dark, heavy presence. I must have stood staring at him for a century. Then all at once, he sprang to action and bolted up the small path towards me. I responded, leapt back and slammed the door in front of me. But before I could swing the latch over its hook on the inside of the door, he had burst through it, sending it screaming on its hinges and thumping painfully into me. I staggered back, then stumbled for the gun I had stashed underneath the cot.
With one powerful leap, he came for me, clutched at my throat and pulled me towards him. I screamed and thrashed, but my muscles were weak. I hadn’t eaten properly in three days, and was faint and dehydrated. His arm around my neck, I could do nothing but kick backwards against him. With one solid, vicious blow he brought the ball of his fist hard down onto my back, smashing into my kidneys and leaving me to totter in pain for a moment.
I saw stars, then nothing.
When the pain dissipated somewhat I realized I was on the floor, my legs dragging across the splintered wood beneath me. I came to just as he started to loop a rough cord around my wrists and pin both my hands behind me. I was tossed into the corner like a bag of trash. Groaning, I lifted my head and tried to breathe through the scary pain now radiating out from the left side of my spine. Without the support of the cabin walls behind me, I was sure I would have blacked out and fallen over.
“Where is he? Where’s Jack,” he said at last. I looked up and saw him peering down at me, his breath coming in unhealthy sounding rasps.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. My only thought was the baby. That I had been too weak. That my body hadn’t been enough to protect it…
“Liar. Tell me where he is,” he said again. My vision cleared and I lifted my chin to him. His hair was disheveled and his skin had a waxy, sick look to it. His eyes were wide and crazy looking. He must have come at an incredible speed to have caught up
to us.
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already.” I was too weak to fight. Too tired. I was done with violence, done with the blood and the hurt and the killing.
“Oh, I plan to,” he said casually, and took a step towards me.
“But what’s the rush? You always were so keen to end our little chats, to run off. Why?”
I said nothing. Jack could be a few minutes from the cabin. Or he could be miles away.
“I thought you were dead, actually. But I’m glad you’re not,” he said, crouching down onto his haunches and looking at me, struggling to breath, bound in the corner.
“Why?”
“Because we have unfinished business, don’t we?”
His smile revolted me. It looked like it even revolted him. The thought of having this man touch me again sent a deep wave of nausea through me. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Should have spared everyone. He looked around at the interior of the cabin with interest, then back at me, ogling the soft swell of my abdomen. My muscles felt like they had been wrung out dry.
“You and I were always meant to be, that’s what I think, Evie. You understand life. You understand death. You’re a woman, but you know how to think…” he said in a quiet voice.
I did nothing to conceal my grimace. He reached into his pocket and I winced, but he only pulled out a small cigarette tin, one with a small, faded picture on the front. Delicately, like he was dealing with something unspeakably precious, he opened the tin, dipped in his pinky finger and lifted the brown powder to his nostril and snorted hard. He repeated this process on the other side.
“What’s that?” I asked, although I had a strong suspicion I already knew. He smiled, closed the lid and gently tucked it away in his jacket again. He thought carefully for a moment, his gaze to the floor before he looked at me again. It wasn’t just my imagination. The change in him was almost instant. I couldn’t say why or how, but he had become a demon. I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I watched something like a dark cloud move over his expression.